David Cameron rounded off a hectic first day of campaigning last night by throwing back Gordon Brown's claims on the economy and attacking Labour's campaign tactics.

Hours after the prime minister launched his campaign on a platform of securing the recovery, the Tory leader warned that a Labour victory would "completely wreck" the economy.

Cameron ended the day at a rally in Leeds by taunting Labour after it had tried to portray him as an unreliable relic of the 1980s by dressing him up as Gene Hunt perched on his red Audi Quattro.

Joking that his wife is still coming to terms with living under the same roof as the rakish Ashes to Ashes character, Cameron ended the rally with the cry: "As a much more witty man than I said: 'Fire up that Quattro, it's time for change'."

Cameron's language last night was a deliberate hardening of his rhetoric. In Leeds, in his third appearance of the day in as many regions, the Tory leader focused on the economy as he challenged Brown's central claim — that Labour is best placed to secure economic recovery.

Speaking without notes to around 200 party supporters, who stood around him in a circle in at Leeds City Museum, Cameron condemned Labour's planned rise in national insurance contributions as a tax on jobs.

"There is a Conservative alternative which is to stop this waste and to stop the Labour jobs tax that is coming down the track that will completely wreck our recovery."

Cameron wrapped up the Leeds rally at 7.20pm, nearly nine hours after launching his campaign in London. Standing on the terrace of the old county hall, with the House of Commons in the background, he took a cue from Barack Obama, whose presidential campaign in the US had stressed hope and the future.

"Let me tell you what I think this election is all about – it is about the future of our economy, it's about the future of our society, it's about the future of our country," he told Conservative candidates and supporters as his wife looked on.

Cameron, whose appearance was carefully timed to take place between Brown's departure from Buckingham Palace and his appearance in Downing Street, then turned on the prime minister: "It's the most important general election for a generation. It comes down to this. You don't have to put up with another five years of Gordon Brown."

The Tory leader appeared to nod to both Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy. Echoing Nixon's pledge to champion the "silent majority", Cameron said he wanted to help the "Great Ignored" who work hard and pay their taxes. "These people – black or white, rich or poor, straight or gay – do the right thing," he said in Leeds.

Cameron also echoed Kennedy's famous declaration in his 1961 inaugural address. The Tory leader said at his morning campaign launch that people should be "not just be asking what can government do for me but what we can all do together to make our society stronger".

After the London launch, Cameron visited the marginal Labour seat of Birmingham Edgbaston, 47th on the Tory target list. The Conservatives need to gain 116 seats to secure an overall parliamentary majority of one.

During his tour of the seat, Cameron visited the Queen Elizabeth Hospital where,during the 2001 election, Tony Blair was harangued by Sharon Storer over the cancer treatment for her partner.

Tory sources said that yesterday gave a strong idea of the sort of campaign Cameron will run. He will make visits to at least two regions every day accompanied by a team including four key aides who will always be at his side.

They are Kate Fall, his deputy chief of staff and fellow Oxford graduate, who has known Cameron since they worked at Tory central office in the early 1990s. Fall is the most senior member of the Cameron inner circle on the road; Liz Sugg, the super-efficient logistics chief whose mother has run Kenneth Clarke's office for years; Gabby Bertin, Cameron's press officer, who has worked for him since he was appointed shadow education secretary after the 2005 election. Bertin will return to the election trail when she has recovered from a bout of flu; and Caroline Preston, Bertin's deputy, who has worked for the Tories for most of this parliament.

The Tory day will kick off every morning with a meeting at 6.15am chaired by the campaign director, George Osborne, in a glass-fronted office at the end of the "war room" at party HQ on Millbank. This meeting will prepare for the Tories' daily press conference at 8.30am.